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Freedom Flees in Terror
Paul McMasters of the Freedom Forum has an editorial about the various and many restrictions on freedom that are following in the wake of the September 11 crashes.
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"Would you trade in some of your personal freedom to be safer from terrorists?"
Most folks would agree to this, certainly. Unfortunately, as it stands, it seems the more salient question is "Would you trade in some of your personal freedo to be no safer from terrorists?" Because that's where it is: we will be asked to sacrifice our freedoms, but will be no safer from terrorist actions-- especially terrorist that display the adaptibility, patience and savage will that these hijackers did.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
What good it is, is that if we're going to die, let's die with our morals intact. I would rather die free than live in shackles.
Once you're willing to give up your morals, where do you draw the line? If the government tells you that they need to be able to randomly search your house, because you might be a terrorist (and they blow things up, so you could DIE!), would you stand for it? If the government says "this internet thing is letting too many people exchange terrorist plans, and if they do that, you could DIE!, so we're going to censor the net.", would you stand for it?
The bottom line is that once you acknowledge that you're willing to trade your moral values for your life, your life isn't worth possessing any more.
would you give up email privacy in exchange for Los Angeles?
Of course I would (and I'm in Australia) As long as you can prove to me that letting the FBI read my e-mail will make a difference.
I heard a news report this morning that there was a person in First Class on the same flight from Boston a week earler. On this flight there were 4 people of middle eastern extraction in first class with him that were acting very strangly. If this is true, they were probably doing a dry run for the atack. Anyway, this person actually reported it to the FBI.
In other words, if this news artical was true, the FBI knew something was wrong a week before, and it still did not stop them.
So I repeat: As long as you can prove to me that letting the FBI read my e-mail will make a difference.
I just had an extensive argument on IRC regarding this. Basically I posed this hypothetical situation: A terrorist is using email to plan to nuke Los Angeles. Suppose that a carnivore-like system were able to detect this and avert it. Given that the system is not abused, I repeat, given that its not abused (no fair saying "but it will be") would you give up email privacy in exchange for Los Angeles?
Suppose that pigs can fly...
"Given that the system is not abused" - where are you giving that from? If there's one thing that history tells us about these systems, they are abused.
The other part of your hypothetical.
"that a carnivore-like system were able to detect this and avert it" - do you seriously believe that the terrorists are not going to be able to get messages past such a system and yet you'll still have the freedom to freely send messages? The only way to keep on top of new techniques is to severly restrict the noise ratio on data channels, and this means restrictions on internet use. There are no ways to stop low bandwidth information transfer.
Even something as simple as either looking at or not looking at a site like slashdot once a day gives you one bit a day of data transfer. It would be easy to hide a short message in a single slashdot post - even something as simple as choice of punctuation, spelling errors, etc - if agreed on without going through the carnivore net - would be enough to give maybe 10 digits of data in a post this long.
I'm amazed that slashdot readers can believe that such a system wouldn't be abused - I mean how likely is that that the RIAA wouldn't push for this to be used to monitor 'illegal' behaviour as well.
I'm sick of seeing this blown out of proportion over and over again. It's not an infringement of our civil liberties. It's just a radio network making recommendations to its stations on how not to offend the fuck out of their listeners the day after five thousand people were murdered. As far as I can tell that's just good business sense combined with a little sensitivity.
Because the concept of making a choice between "free speech vs. safety" is a moral/ethical decision. It's a value judgement of sorts.
Your comment about "And if I was a doctor and was required to do it by the state i would rather do it than die." doesn't ring true for any stanch Roman Catholic, who would believe that would be an Express Ticket to Hell.
Lots of people, throughout the history of this country, have decided for themselves that "living free" was more important than "living at all". Those men and women bled and died on battlefields from Saratoga forward...
For someone to say that "living" is worth more than "living free" disgraces the memory of those many who died specifically to prove otherwise.
Okay...take this. If I'm a hypothetical terrorist, and I'm sending/getting e-mail about the above scenario. Now, if I'm smart, it'll look like
K Ljfls
asdfASEAJfakjaSKjdkljaAJK>jflkjasADFjASDJKFjakl sdjfAAKSjkaljtlkrutaileACJieAJaJAIOEAIUEIUaLFKJas
until it gets decrypted. But lets suppose I'm somewhat dim and don't encrypt this. What would Carnivore think of
-------
Tonight I was listening to Sting and
Los Lobos. Sting's song from The Soul Cages,
Angels Will Fall is not as good as his anti-
Nuke stuff from the 80s, but it is still better than Blue
Midnight by Los Lobos.
--------
so..am I just some idiot stuck in the 80s, or was the message the first word of each sentence - Tonight Los Angels Muke Midnight.
Hell...does Carnivore even do anything other than english?
What constantly stuns me about the American public is how much it seems that few remember their lessons from civics class on why and how the US was formed.
The founders of the US framed the constitution based around the fact that the natural tendency of government is to oppress its people and for this reason there are a number of safeguards in the US constitution (Bill of Rights, Seperation of powers, etc) that are there for the express purpose of preventing the government from oppressing the people. The current trend of assuming that the government knows best and won't abuse its powers runs counter to spirit that originally founded the United States and would have the framers of the constitution rolling in their graves.
Seems this is an appropriate place to toss out a couple of new attack-related sites.
First, Jane's Security has some ideas about who may be behind this attack... and it ain't bin Laden.
Second, Political Cartoons, a collection of attack-related cartoons. Some are worth a second look: you can draw opposing interpretations from them.
The Dalai Lama's letter to Bush. Worth reading twice: it's short, and important.
Bush's Language: why calling this a "crusade" is rather foolish.
Also, I'd like to apologize for a previous post in which I used the word "accident" in lieu of "attack." My mind was somewhere else, and I think it was trying to fool itself about the atrocity of the attack.
This can be a sick and cruel world, or a world of joy and life. I encourage you to encourage others to choose the latter. Let's stop the hatred within our own communities, as we try to stop the hatred between nations.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
No, it's not. Its the government taking it away BECAUSE of the terrorists, but make no mistake, nobody from bin Laden's camp is signing the bills into law.
Vietnam. Please. Now you can go ahead and say "we weren't actually at WAR" but this would conflict with your earlier interpretation of this term, since you say "WE ARE AT WAR!" without us currently being at war.
They don't think so.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Damn idealists.
There are many things the public should know (that the government would prefer us not to), that terrorists have absolutely no interest in. Does "Tuskeegee syphillis study" ring a bell? Less seriously, when the hell are we going to find out who shot JFK? :-)
Disclaimer, I do not live in the United States. I live in a third-world backwater country which has a severe domestic terrorism problem, at least in the southern provinces...
Military action and curtailment of civil liberties as "solutions" to the terrorism problem are all ultimately temporary fixes, designed to treat the symptoms, not the disease. If the United States and its allies in the First World don't attempt to go beyond short-sighted military retaliation, they're going to lose this war even more badly than they lost Vietnam. Military response is a good thing here in the interim, but it must be combined with a wholistic strategy which addresses one of the main roots of the problem:
GLOBAL POVERTY
This is the biggest single reason why terror groups exist. The rest of the world feels disenfranchised and oppressed by what it perceives to be a big bully ramming policies down their throats which are designed to enrich him at their expense. Those of us who live in the third world, know that this accusation is not without basis. I am not justifying their approach to terror; I am giving what I see is the fundamental reason why these groups turn to violence. They feel unempowered, unable to control their own destinies; September 11 was the greatest blow they struck in this mad attempt of theirs to take the power back.
Terrorism has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, and has everything to do with power. Terror groups hide behind the mask of religious fundamentalism, but no major religion in the world countenances the acts of September 11.
Capture Osama bin Laden and they will have chopped one head off the Hydra. Two more will grow back in his place. The only way to defeat the hydra will be to attempt to change US foreign and financial policy to truly attempt to aid the nations of the developing world instead of screwing us over and enriching themselves over us. If the United States and the developed nations can truly be seen to be making a positive difference to the destinies of the developing world, then it will be much harder to motivate people to perpetrate acts of terror.
Attempting to restrict civil liberties within the developed world is another particularly short-sighted response to acts of terror. Such restrictions on civil liberties are probably going to increase not decrease, the incidence of terror, as it will also increase the ranks of the disenfranchised and oppressed within your country as well, and domestic terrorism will probably become all the more serious. But of course, this is exactly what the control freaks in your government want, as it will give them more excuses to further perpetrate their reign of terror.
A real long-term solution to the problem of terrorism will be to revise and rethink your foreign policy. If your foreign policy were not so baldly corporatist, so baldly and arrogantly benefiting the few at the expense of the many, international terrorism would begin to decrease. Naturally, military and police action would be a good thing, but it is ultimately a short-term solution only. That only sows fear, and ultimately all fear can be overcome, as the terrorists who crashed their planes into the WTC proved to us in the most graphic way possible.
The world is still big enough for all of us to live peacefully. But if some nations insist on grabbing the lion's share at the expense of those who have none, then there will be conflict, there will be violence, there will be monstrous acts of terror. They know they can't take on the United States head-on, Iraq proved that, so they will attempt to wage a world-wide guerrila war. World War III is here, but it looks like no other war in all of history. The only way to win it will be to change the rules.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
You're correct, in a way...
it's the fact that terrorists are attacking us which is directly causing us to lose our freedoms.
Did the World Trade Center, or 5000 people provide us with freedom? No...
Did the Pentagon provide us with freedom? Hardly...
Am I any less free than I was last week? Yes.
Who made me less free? Was it the terrorists attacking, or the congress critters reacting?
Reaction is the most dangerous force in the Universe, because it defies logic and analysis... too much emotion goes into decisions which can't be taken back easily.
Will limiting American freedoms politically help stop terrorism? Maybe.
But when we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists have already won.
This is nothing but empty rhetoric. While empty rhetoric is enough to get you modded up to +5, it is not enough to convince anyone who disagrees with you. I am not saying that you are wrong just that you need to back up your claims. Be specific. Look at each proposed limitation on freedom and clearly explain why it won't work.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
It might be worth pointing out to the non-Americans reading just how freakily attached to the Stars and Stripes Americans are. (or maybe, worth pointing out to Americans how unusual their preoccupation with the flag is).
In the USA you can buy a national flag in every supermarket. I don't know where I'd go to buy a union jack flag (as opposed to a t-shirt, whatever) -- I'd probably have to find some sort of specialist ceremonial goods shop...
There was recently an interesting TV series called 'The Tourist Trap', wherein each episode a group of holidaymakers from a single country were exposed to a series of events designed to test their reactions. One morning, the holidaymakers awoke to find their national flag in ashen tatters, and their hotel deserted. The Brits reacted with nonplussed bemusement, a few giggles. The Japanese didn't really know what to think, teh Germans were stoic. The Americans threw an absolute fit; you'd have thought someone had killed their grannies...
I'm not criticising anyone, just pointing out some cultural differences...
Wasn't a law against flag burning the theme of the "Amendment to Be" song that replace Itchy and Scratchy in one episode of The Simpsons....?